Downloads lags computer very very badly

[PigeonMC]

Kinda says it all in the title but whenever I try to download something on steam, my whole pc lags, freezes and becomes bassically unusable. I have tried many solutions online and the only thing thats worked for me is limit downloads to 200mbps, but this bothers me very much because my connection can be much faster (900mbps down) and this issue only started happening recently. The main solution that I found online apears to be the virtual memory thing that you aparently have to increase, I did but it did not stop the lag, prehaps I need to increase it more depending on how fast my download speed is? Sorry if I made any writing mistakes, english isn't my first language and I am very tired. Hope someone has a fix or a suggestion and if so, thanks in advance.

[nullable]

What are your specs?

Steam downloads can be disk and CPU intensive, so low end hardware may feel that more.

[PigeonMC]

Originally posted by nullable:

What are your specs?

Steam downloads can be disk and CPU intensive, so low end hardware may feel that more.

I have an i5 12600k, 3080, and I have 3 different drives (HDD, SDD and M.2)

[nullable]

Well, which one is Steam installed on? And does it matter which one the game is installed on?

Also what drives. SSD and M.2 only covers like hundreds of drives with differing performance.

When the issue started happening recently, were their any system changes, or were you just starting to use a particular drive for games?

[PigeonMC]

Originally posted by nullable:

Well, which one is Steam installed on? And does it matter which one the game is installed on?

Also what drives. SSD and M.2 only covers like hundreds of drives with differing performance.

When the issue started happening recently, were their any system changes, or were you just starting to use a particular drive for games?

Idk the specifics of the ssd, other than "it's pretty good"
The M.2 is a 960G corsair Force MP510

Steam is and always was installed on my ssd (wich is also my boot drive if that matters) and it lags no matter what drive I install my steam games on.

I don't recall any significant system changes during before and after the lags started appearing.

[PigeonMC]

well I sorta fixed it, I just cleared the download cache a second time and now it only lags a little.

[Elucidator]

Originally posted by PigeonMC:

Originally posted by nullable:

What are your specs?

Steam downloads can be disk and CPU intensive, so low end hardware may feel that more.

I have an i5 12600k

This is the cause.
There is a bug on windows 11 22h2 with Intel 12gen CPUs
The reason why your PC lags is because all of your performance cores stop working when you make the window (steam) inactive (by for example, clicking on your browser, and going to watch youtube as you download).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1027852/windows-11-22h2-thread-director-issues-with-intel

So far I can tell, Windows hasn't fixed this yet
I recommend keeping an eye out for CPU driver updates or windows updates.

but anyway, it also slows down Steam Downloading and causes other issues unfortunately.

A way to bypass it (temporarily at least) is by running Steam as admin (which you're not supposed to do, but unfortunately this bug is otherwise going to cause you trouble)

[PigeonMC]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

Originally posted by PigeonMC:

I have an i5 12600k

This is the cause.
There is a bug on windows 11 22h2 with Intel 12gen CPUs
The reason why your PC lags is because all of your performance cores stop working when you make the window (steam) inactive (by for example, clicking on your browser, and going to watch youtube as you download).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1027852/windows-11-22h2-thread-director-issues-with-intel

So far I can tell, Windows hasn't fixed this yet
I recommend keeping an eye out for CPU driver updates or windows updates.

but anyway, it also slows down Steam Downloading and causes other issues unfortunately.

A way to bypass it (temporarily at least) is by running Steam as admin (which you're not supposed to do, but unfortunately this bug is otherwise going to cause you trouble)

I dont think that's it either because it lags even if steam is focused. However I do suspect it has something to do with the performance/efficency core thing, because it lags just like when something gets my cpu to 100% but in the task manager everything looks normal when downloading... thanks for the answer tho!

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

Originally posted by PigeonMC:

I have an i5 12600k

This is the cause.
There is a bug on windows 11 22h2 with Intel 12gen CPUs
The reason why your PC lags is because all of your performance cores stop working when you make the window (steam) inactive (by for example, clicking on your browser, and going to watch youtube as you download).

I doubt that 6 performance cores can not handle a download.

[PigeonMC]

Originally posted by PigeonMC:

well I sorta fixed it, I just cleared the download cache a second time and now it only lags a little.

yeah it still lags... I am so tired of this it doesn't make any sense, nothing spikes to 100% in the task manager everything is at 30% or less...

[Sparon]

Hey, sorry to bring back a 6 month old thread, but did you ever find a fix for this? I have similar specs to you and I've recently gone from 50mbps to 1000mbps download speed and now have this issue. Restarting Steam a couple of times and closing a bunch of programs temporarily fixes it, but yeah nothing in Task Manager shows the cause. I noticed this happening because it lags my Corsair fans' RGB.

I reinstalled Steam and that fixed it for one launch. I am on a recently fresh installation of Windows 11 too

[Sparon]

Actually, I just fixed this! I downloaded ParkControl, and did the following for Plugged In (AC):
Parking - OFF, 100%
Freq Scaling - OFF, 100%
Heterogenous Policy - 0: Standard Parking
Short Threads - 2: Prefer performant processors
Long Threads - 2: Prefer performant processors

This forces Windows to prefer the performance cores, without disabling the efficiency cores

[Steven]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.